Home / Full timeline / Elizabeth Keckley, assistant to first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, is born. She would go on to release a controversial memoir that ends her relationship with Lincoln.
Elizabeth Keckley, assistant to first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, is born. She would go on to release a controversial memoir that ends her relationship with Lincoln.
1818 (Apr 1)
Elizabeth Keckley was born enslaved in Dinwiddie, Virginia, and was taken to St. Louis, Missouri, in her teens. She helped support her enslaver's family and her own son through her dressmaking and seam stressing skills. Through loans from her customers, Keckley bought her freedom and that of her son on November 15, 1855 and moved to Washington. She became the dressmaker, personal maid, and confidante of first lady Mary Todd Lincoln in early 1861 and continued until 1868, when the publication of Keckley's memoirs ended their friendship. The book, "Behind the Scenes, or "Thirty Years a Slave," and "Four Years in the White House", was highly controversial, as it relayed Mrs. Lincoln's personal opinions of government officials and her own family life. Keckley's dressmaking business declined after the public furor over the book, and she pursued a brief career as a schoolteacher. She died of a paralytic stroke in Washington on May 26, 1907.
References:
- • Hornsby, Alton. Chronology of African-American History: Significant Events and People from 1619 to the Present. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.